Hi there, thanks to all who have shown interest in my meccanoid mod. A video demonstrating it working and a showing in detail all my mods is nearly complete however I have been called away for a few days for work. Will complete as soon as I am back. Thanks once again for your interest.

My reason for purchasing G15 KS is simple I wanted to build a much larger robot than my Revolution JD. My Revolution JD as I have stated in the post is a fantastic robot. The Revoluton JD is used 50% of the time to test algorithms which I then try out on Jeeves (ex-meccanoid).

Let's take a look at how the meccanoid became Jeeves.

Step 1: I purchased two developer kits from EZ-Robot through a firm in the UK. I knew this would be more than I needed but I was pretty sure I would make use of most of the components in the kit.

Step 2: I needed to fit a controller onto Jeeves some how. This was accomplished using to small plastic bracket fitted on the back of Jeeves. Another bracket was fitted to hold the lipo batteries. 7.4 volt 1300mah 25C. I then fixed the EZ controller and the batteries to the brackets. The robot is also powered using a Manson EP-925 DC power supply. I cannot keep charging batteries because when testing algorithms I may need him to run for hours. At this point I had decided to remove the meccabrain.

Step 3: This was the step that made me quite nervous. Could I change the meccano servos for EZ. I tried to change one of the lower arm servos. The servo casings were very easy to pull apart. The EZ servo slotted straight in. However, there was one small problem. One of the bolts that hold the servo in the bracket has a nut on the other side that the meccano servo holds in place and the EZ does not. The meccano servo is slightly wider. I overcame this by placing a small piece of blu-tac to hold the nut in place. I then continued to change all the servos. First the three on the left arm. Then the right arm. Then finally the neck and the head. Then using servo extension cables I connected the eight servos to the controllers. Please make sure that each servo can rotate through its complete movement without pulling on the cables. You do not want the movement to pull cables out of the controller. I then fired up EZ-Builder and using the Auto position plug-in and the animator. I tested all the servo movements. Success.

Step 4: While testing I noticed that I could get Jeeves to gesture no, but not yes. So I rearranged the head and neck servos as shown in my original photos. Jeeves can now gesture yes and no. Not really sure why meccano arranged them the way they did but it doesn't matter now. I also changed the orientation of the elbow servos. This allows the arms to be brought in front of the Jeeves. One small point when using the animator or direct programming make the servo move slowly. If you don't it will cause Jeeves (ex-meccanoid) to rock quite a bit. Slowing movement slightly, cured the problem.

Step 5: With all the servos working. Let's look at the motors that make it move. As these motors require quite a bit of power I decided to use the battery setup provided by meccano. All I needed now was a way to control the motors from the EZ controller. This is achieved by installing a Sabertooth 2X12 motor driver. I fixed a bracket like the one shown in the video that was big enough to hold the meccano battery and the Sabertooth. Please remember to place some washers under the sabertooth to raise it up from the plastic surface. This will ensure that heat dispurses better. When this is complete you are ready to wire up. For a step by step guide go to the forum and there you will find a brilliant guide that will take you through all the steps required to wire the sabertooth. The title of the guide is "Sabertooth 2x25 And Ez-b V4 Simply Serial Connection" and was created by Steve G from the UK. Work your way through this. It is exactly what I did, to the letter. The link to his tutorial is shown below.

Man that's great! Really well done video as well - he responds to your commands and really has a great personality. I was never fond of the look of the meccanoid before but i think that was because the twitchy silliness of the mechano programming. With your EZ-Builder programming, he has a much more stable personality. The grippers are a great add-on as well!